Renee Ellmers “grows in office” …

That spells BIG trouble for us, fellow taxpayers. You see, The New York Times — like The Raleigh News & Observer — does not care for ANYTHING even remotely conservative. In either of those publications, if you see a mention of a conservative’s name, you can bet the piece is some kind of nasty hit job. After reading the recent profile in The Times of the Dunn Republican — soon to be Moore County’s representative in Congress — an eerie, cold sensation shot up my spine.

The National Review coined a term “growing in office” to refer to a conservative who goes to Washington and — as soon as they arrive — tosses their principles out the window to make friends and be liked. (For instance, Jesse Helms DID NOT “grow in office.”)

Judging from the verbiage in The Times profile, I can safely say that Mrs. Ellmers — who campaigned as an anti-establishment Tea Party conservative — has “grown in office”:

From her spot on a podium at a recent news conference on Capitol Hill, Representative Renee Ellmers, Republican of North Carolina, looked slightly nervous.

Mrs. Ellmers, 47, a nurse who was elected to Congress in 2010 with zero political experience, had been given the task of helping to sell the bill championed by Speaker John A. Boehner to raise the debt ceiling, a job usually left to the leaders of her party. She took a deep breath and plunged into an explanation of how the task of lawmaking compared to saving a patient near death.

“America is in a code,” she said, urging people to rally behind Mr. Boehner. “It’s crisis time, and it ain’t pretty.”

In a hospital, she said, “there were people in the room that you may not have even liked, but you were all working together to save the patient.”

“And in the end you were high-fiving, hugging, crying and laughing,” she said.

Mrs. Ellmers’s willingness to promote Mr. Boehner’s agenda places her in direct contrast to some of her freshman colleagues, who prefer to repair to Fox News to verbally poke the Republican leadership in the eye.

Her loyalty, relentless cheer and folksy locution — a news conference complement to the laconic, cigarette-tinged pronouncements of Mr. Boehner — have combined to make her one of the Republican leadership’s greatest freshman allies, and a rising star in the conference she once derided from her perch at Tea Party rallies back home.

There is Mrs. Ellmers giving the Republicans’ weekly radio address. There she is on CNN or “Fox and Friends,” explaining why Mr. Boehner’s plan to deal with the debt ceiling — one that many of her classmates protested — was the right path. There she is writing op-ed articles and pushing the message of the leaders, rather than of the elected president of the freshman class.

Her willingness to join the leadership, rather than beat up on it, is something that Tea Party groups in her state have begun to notice. Mrs. Ellmers understands their chagrin because she has been there.

“There is just a lot of mistrust Americans have for ‘those people in Washington,’ ” she said, adding with a laugh, “and now I am one of those people in Washington.”

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

She may possess the good looks of a Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin, but she clearly does not have the steel spine those ladies possess.